Closet Organisation: Belts and Scarves

So, you might have noticed that I don’t tend to wear a whole lot of accessories.

I’ll be completely honest: it’s partly that I’m lazy I like to keep things simple. I’ve always been a fan of very simple, unfussy silhouettes, and I’ve never been big on OMGLAYERING, or the idea that you should always “add a colourful accesory!” to give you outfit a “pop” of colour. I leave that kind of thing to the people who are actually good at it.

It’s mostly, however, because my accessory collection is normally such a mess that I can’t find anything, and so don’t even try. In our last house, for instance, my belts and scarves were all draped on a collection of coat-hangers, and then buried at the very back of a closet. Every time I tried to remove a hanger to find something, the whole lot would go sliding to the floor, and I’d have to spend the next 20 minutes sorting through them all, and then putting them back so I could repeat the whole sorry performance the next day. Except I DIDN’T repeat it the next day, because the next day I’d just open the closet door, look inside and think, “Nah, don’t think so…” then be on my way, my usual, un-accessorised self.

In this house, I’m determined that things will be different. I already wrote a bit about how super-organised I want the house to be, and I’m starting off with my closet. Which Terry is currently in the process of building for me now. I KNOW. I am so excited to finally have a walk-in closet, and am imagining it will be a bit like having a tiny clothes store in my house. Living the dream here, people.

Anyway! The closet itself will hold my clothes and shoes, but I still needed to solve the problem of the accessories, so a couple of weeks ago I ordered a few different accessory-storage-type items to try out, starting off with this guy, which cost me all of £4.50, but which holds most of my belts, with room to spare:

The little rubber bits at the top of the photo come apart to allow you to slide the buckle through, then when you want to take a belt off it, you just spin it around until the one you want is next to the opening, et voila. It hangs up in the closet via a hook at the top, and I like it because the belts can’t all just fall off the second you touch them, like they did with my last, um, “solution”.

I say “most of” my belts: that’s actually ALL of the regular belts I own. I also, however, have a small collection of elasticated waspie belts which this doesn’t work for because they have snap closures rather than buckles, so I put them on this:

Yeah, it’s just a boring old trouser hanger, which was previously used for – you guessed it! – trousers. I actually hate these hangers for trousers, because the ones on the bottom rung get covered by the ones on the rungs above them, so you have to rummage through layers of trousers to find what you’re looking for. Also, I seem to be physically incapable of folding trousers over these things without them getting little crease marks in the corners, and I HATE that, so I put the trousers on a different set of hangers, and used this for the belts. It has the same drawbacks for belts as it did for trousers, of course, in that the ones on the top hang over the ones on the bottom (I have more than three belts, by the way: I just put these three on for, er, artistic reasons. Yes.), but hey, first world problems: it’ll do for now.

Which brings me to the scarves. Oh, the scarves. They were everywhere, people. EVERYWHERE. Well, OK, they weren’t really EVERYWHERE: they were mostly crammed into the back of that same closet, on one of those same trouser hangers pictured above (yeah, that’s totally not going to work out for those belts, is it? What was I thinking?). And then they were mostly on the floor of that closet, because they’d slip off the hanger, and I wouldn’t realise until I wanted to wear one, and discover it on the floor in a crumpled mess. So I bought them this, also from the appropriately-named Hangerworld:

It was £10, which, I dunno, seemed like quite a lot for a piece of wood with some holes in it? If I was the crafty type, I’d have made it myself, from some wood I salvaged from a shipwreck, or whatever it is crafty types do. But I’m not a crafty type, obviously (Can you tell?), so I coughed up the £10 instead. “Only the best for my scarves!” I said confidently, as I pressed the “Buy Now” button. “Because they’re WORTH it!”

(OK, I wrote all of that before I went to get the link from the site, and now that I have, I see the hanger was actually only £8.95. So that’s TOTALLY different.)

It’s quite exciting, this post, isn’t it? I mean, first I show you belts, next I show you scarves. “WHAT WILL SHE THRILL AND AMAZE US WITH NEXT?” I hear you ask. Well, how abot MOAR SCARVES? Because you wouldn’t think it to look at me, but I don’t only have ten scarves. I DID only have one scarf hanger, with ten holes, though, and I sure as hell wasn’t shelling out ANOTHER £8.95 (I mean, the scarves may be worth it, but they’re not THAT great, ya know?), so I headed to good old Ikea, and got me a Komplement:

(Thanks to Terry for taking on scarf-storage modelling duties here: one for the C.V. for sure!)

So, this isn’t totally ideal either, but honestly, I was REALLY bored with the whole scarf thing by that point, as I’m sure you are too, so I’m going to leave it for now and see how I get on with it. In the meantime, do tell: how do you store accessories like scarves and belts? Go on, teach me your ways…

Hi, I'm Amber, and I'm a full-time parenting/lifestyle blogger, and author of My Blogging Secrets, now available from Amazon. I live in Scotland with my husband, Terry, and baby son, Max, and you can read more about me here.

I put both scarves and belts in separate drawers. It’s definitely not ideal (you have to rummaged through it to find the one you want) but it’s better than nothing. I like the wooden hanger you bought – and though it is a bit expensive – I think it could very well be worth it.

Maybe I would put more than one scarf in one hole? I don’t think it would be that bad – depending on the thickness of the scarf though…

I keep my scarves tied in a loop on trouser hangers, and my belts rolled up in those little compartmentalized drawer dividers from Ikea. It’s very neat-looking and easy to find a certain belt, but they do tend to cluster so when I want to pull one out, I get three for the price of one. I might have to look into another solution…

I’m lucky that we have two sets of floor the ceiling wardrobes in our bedroom (with a stack of drawers too!) so my scarves live in a folded pile in my main wardrobe with all my folded piles of tops and knitwear and I have an entire drawer full of belts. It’s a little drawer but just houses belts and the little envelopes that come with your clothes containing spare buttons!

I have the full Ikea wardrobe system that the Komplement hangers fit in, so I have 3 of those loop type ones for scarves (I have a lot of scarves). They also do a strip of hooks that fix to the inside side wall of your wardrobe and then slide out, so I keep most of my belts on that. The ones that are too big are rolled up in an empty Irregular Choice shoe box (those boxes are like drawers rather than just standard shoe boxes with lids).

most my scarves live neatly stacked in a shelf on my wardrobe (sounds organised right?) except the ones I actually wear! I tend to have one or randomly chucked somewhere in my room and I’ll wear these until I get bored of them at which point they’ll be added to the scarf shelf- I think the last time I actually took a scarf off the shelf was in January!

{Sigh} I dream of the perfect walk in closet too. When we are in Ikea, I get a little light headed in the bedrooms that have the perfectly decorated boudoirs. Of course, my reality is 3/4 of standard Canadian closet, and I make do. I have the exact same belt hanger, woot woot. It works pretty good, but you may find yourself wearing the belts that are at the front end a lot more than the ones at the back. Or maybe that’s just my laziness. I have an ever growing collection of scarves, and on the inside of a front hall closet door, I have five large hooks. I just keep piling them on to the hooks…roughly in colour selections. I like that they are by my door and opposite a mirror, and reach for them often as a final touch to my outfit. When they were in my bedroom, they got overlooked a lot. I’ll pick a colour, say red…and root through the red stash until I find my muse for the day. It’s not perfect, but I have to say, they are no longer a forgotten accessory.

I had to go and check mine, LOL, ’cause wouldn’t that be hilarious to think that all these many years I’ve been sadly neglecting the belts in the back. Nope, my little hanger is in a locked position. 🙂

I hang my belts on hooks in my closet and I have a scarf hanger on my closet door. It was there when I moved in, and I’m not really sure that’s what they were built for, but that’s what I use them for.

I have recently done the same – wardrobe organisation. I have found the Lakeland purple scarf hangers to be brilliant as the fuzz keeps silk from slipping. For belts, leggings etc they also have wooden hangers with a kind of elastic arrangement which works well. I bought myself a whole load of padded satin hangers for my clothes – best deal was Morplan, which sells to shops usually but also to joe public – just be aware that their prices are usually without VAT.

I’m lucky in that my current wardrobe comes with handy rails inside both doors, one of which stores my belts and the other my scarves. However, I may not be so lucky in my next house, so I’ll have to keep these ideas in mind for the future.

I really love that belt storage loop, such a nifty idea. I have a vast collection of vintage silk scarves which I keep folded in a vintage handbag. It’s not ideal but I’m too lazy to think of a better idea. X

I have the best issue but literally all of mine are waspie belts do might invest in trouser hanger. I hate my wardrobe and pretty much everything in it ! Me thinks a tidy up is in order ! Thanks got the inspiring post 🙂